


So Take The Photographs, And Still Frames In Your Mind

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Smallville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: What if Earth-2's Jonathan Kent was accidentally pulled into Earth-1 when Emil rescued Clark?
Kudos: 1
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	So Take The Photographs, And Still Frames In Your Mind

The version of Kent Farm that he knew had looked like this one once; a happy, lived in home, photographs of himself and Martha scattered around the place from the days when things were good between them. Yet he knew it wasn’t his home; this place was full of photos of the other Jonathan Kent with the man he still found it hard not to think of as Clark Luthor even though he knew he wasn’t, photos of the other Jonathan and the other Martha depicting memories that the Jonathan Kent of his earth had never experienced.

Jonathan was never supposed to have been there. Embracing that Earth’s Clark Kent just as his friend Emil had managed to pull him back to his own universe, Jonathan had found himself pulled there too. Clark and Lois had been arguing back and forwards on the subject; from saying that they need to get Jonathan back home, to Lois expressing concerns about a mirror box being still out there and whether or not Clark Luthor could use it against Clark Kent, to whether Clark Luthor could really change now that he had been reintroduced to Jor-El and was out of the influence of the man who had raised him.

The one thing that was clear was that he couldn’t stay here, at least not without questions being asked; with the Jonathan Kent of this universe having been dead for several years, there was no way Clark and Lois could easily explain his return to the people of this Smallville. Clark at one point had raised the possibility of Jonathan remaining on their earth yet living somewhere other than Smallville, somewhere that people didn’t know he was supposed to have died in 2006, suggested that someone called Chloe could take care of the paperwork, but had then realised that this Jonathan, just as the one he knew, wouldn’t have wanted to live out his days anywhere other than Kent Farm. Maybe if this Clark had seen the whole situation where Oliver Queen had bought the farm from under him, he’d understand better. Jonathan had heard Clark and Lois having a conversation at one point about the idea of selling the farm, and hadn’t been able to believe what he was hearing. This farm was supposed to have been in the Kent family for generations, Jonathan had fought that darn fool Queen with everything he had, trying to stop him from buying it to mine for Kryptonite, and if he and Martha had ever had kids he’d have wanted them to continue with the farm too. And in this universe the man who had been his son was actually considering selling it?

Queen had walked in at one point as though he owned the place in this universe as well as the last, and Jonathan had been all set to punch him, then done a double take remembering he’d cursed that guy out at his funeral not that long ago. Clark had had to explain that in this universe Oliver Queen was actually one of his best friends and a welcome guest in the house. The sight of Clark and Oliver embracing each other like brothers came as a shock to Jonathan, even as he reminded himself every time that this was not the Clark Luthor and Oliver Queen he knew. He didn’t know why he had been surprised by it; after all, he had only just got his head round the idea that Lois Lane was engaged to Clark in this universe and not Oliver Queen’s widow as the Lois he knew was. When he’d first arrived there, a part of Jonathan had wanted to yell at Lois to get the hell out of his and Martha’s place, just as he’d wanted to do to the Lois of his world, and had had to remind himself all over again, he wasn’t in his world now.

It was all so different here on this Earth that a part of Jonathan did want to go back, and he could tell deep down that in spite of Lois’s concerns that the mirror box could be used to send Clark back, she agreed. But he also understood that Clark wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him yet, that he’d had this chance to spend more time with the father whose death he still felt some responsibility for in this universe and he wasn’t ready to give that up. Jonathan himself understood this point of view; spending time with this Clark had made him realise how different his life could have been if he and Martha had been the ones to find the other, or if he and Martha had had children of their own. Yet while he knew he would have been proud to have raised this version of Clark Kent, the fact was that he was never going to be the Jonathan Kent who had shared in all the old childhood memories and photos, the Jonathan Kent who was the father Clark knew.

If he was to go back to his own world, there would be no returning to this one; Lois was clear that she wanted to remove all opportunities for Clark to end up trapped in Clark Luthor’s life again, and if the mirror box was used to send Jonathan home, it would immediately be destroyed. So any goodbye to Clark Kent would be the final one. But if Jonathan did return home, he’d get the chance to rebuild things with Martha, to see if he could have the relationship with his wife that the other Jonathan Kent had with his.

The right thing for Jonathan to do was to go home, to try and rebuild the life he had in his own universe. But he also wanted to take this one day to spend with Clark, to give them time for a proper goodbye.


End file.
